Perhaps lately, I don't post so much. However, I have commented from time
to time in the past on this list. As an ASA member, I will speak for
myself.

Yes, you raise a significant issue. One that serious scientific types like
myself wrestle with constantly. Being a theoretical physicist in the
biosciences and currently working on theoretical problems in that field,
I basically have to struggle with this question starting every morning when
I pray and going on throughout the day. It is not like I have not been
questioned by colleagues (the majority of who purport themselves to be
religion free) and it is not like I have not had something that they could
focus on.

As a Christian, I have to accept that the bible has proclaimed miracles that
I cannot explain with my craft. There may be theological grounds for
rejecting the claims or pointing out that the purpose of a Biblical text
(such as Jonah) was not intended to be read literally. Certainly, some of
the arguments are persuasive though some might chose to call that
"compromising". I am not a theologian, and must defer to them at some
point. There may be instances where there are plausible scientific
explanations.

In a big way, it would seem that ever since St Augustine (and St Paul)
first propounded a theology salvation of grace through faith, we all should
find ourselves having to cross an enormous gap that cannot be supported by
anything other than that act of God reaching down to us while we were lost
in the depths of sin. So if you really examine your faith, you will have to
admit that you didn't arrive on some rock solid intellectually irrefutable
grounds. You have accepted Jesus on shaky ground; personal experience, some
miracle that you perceive as God's act of grace or mercy, some event as it
were that made you repent and believe.

As we grow in our Christian faith, we only come to see even more how God had
to go out of his way to reach us and how little we reached for him. I think
we often forget why we wear that cross. It is not to remind ourselves about
about how we would never do "that", rather it is to remind ourselves just
how capable we are to _do_ just "that". "That" being whatever bad things
you see in the world. This is what scientists who proclaim themselves
religion free seem oblivious to. It would be very nice if we could blame
all the evil in the world on people who were well on the road to perdition
with a long resume to prove it. Born evil and prodigiously endowed with
nothing but evil thoughts. Too often, it starts with well meaning people
who intended to do good. How does that happen? Have you ever asked
yourself that? Think about how it has happened with yourself, possibly even
as a Christian. If you have lived much of any time at all as a Christian,
you come to see that that relationship with Christ is _all_ you have between
the narrow path and perdition.

Therefore, I wager that it is very easy to sit in an armchair in a
comfortable room and say how one should address these matters when bullets
are whizzing past his head. It is another thing to know what one will
really do when bullets are really heading his way.

Now, to get to your question. It is not wrong to assume things that don't
have experimental proof of existence. It does, however, put one in a
tenuous situation. I can say I believe in miracles, but I can hardly say I
can prove them. Am I supposed to lie and say "it's a scientific fact that
miracles happen"? What evidence can I present? If you have some
measurement of miracles, lay it down on the table for everyone to see;
including the atheists and doubters. Are you so sure you would not
disappoint them and send them away finding Christians dishonest. Sure, we
can argue a case for the Resurrection, we can argue a case for the Exodus,
but the last step is certainly an act of faith. We trust that God interacts
with the world and may have intervened in the past, and may even
occasionally intervene now. We trust it based on accounts in scripture.
But in the final analysis, we base our belief in scripture on trust (faith
as it were). There is no getting around that.

I would like to sound like some preacher and claim that "the Bible is
True". But it isn't like I have not had to examine myself and my craft and
recognize that when I do theoretical physics, I am doing something different
than when I believe in Jesus. It is to some extent, a form of metaphysics.
There are some things such as in theoretical particle physics where people
will believe things such as strings and unobserved particles that may or may
not be true. But metaphysics has even less connection to experimental
verification than theoretical particle physics, though in some specific
examples, some could argue not much difference. That is a different story.
Particles physics does have an out in that such particles are
_theoretically_ testable for; even if in fact, they are utterly untestable.
On the other hand, metaphysics is largely untestable, because we really
don't understand it and it would be presumptuous to try.

This may also hit on why it is that ID can be questioned theologically
(which you raise in a different post). It is basically another attempt at
proving God. If God could be proved, there would be no need for salvation
by Grace through Faith. Just present the straight facts, and anyone who
refused to believe in Jesus would be well deserving of damnation. Not even
a reprobate. Deserving! Simple as that. But even St Augustine in his time
recognized that salvation is not coming through intellectual efforts or any
other way for that matter. St Paul saw that too. That was not the age of
Enlightenment and science and reasons. The founding fathers of the Church
saw that God even has to give us the faith which he extends by His
Grace; long before any of the current issues with science arose.

To sum up, it is not necessarily that I don't believe the miracles of the
bible. The issue is that I cannot beat people over the head with them;
claiming them as proven facts. I can sometimes offer plausible scientific
examples on what might have happened, I can sometimes conjecture, but
finally, I don't know what happened and have little way to find out. It
doesn't mean they didn't happen, just that I don't have any way to
evaluate. If I could measure one irrefutable miracle, that would open the
door for others, but that does not appear to be how God runs things; and it
would not be consistent with the long tradition we know of grace through
faith.
God give sight to those who know they cannot see, and makes those who claim
they can see blind.

It is true that modern science has made us distinguish between what is faith
and what is fact, but if anything that should make us hold on the Jesus even
more, because we can only realize just how much more we are sinners saved by
Grace.

> Regarding Dowd, assuming Bernieâ€™s characterization of him is correct, I
> would not rush out to the store to buy his books. But in his post, Bernie
> makes a remark which has application to ID-TE relations.
>
>
>
> Bernie suggests that it would be un-Christian not to believe in the
> Resurrection. I assume that Bernie means a real, historical, physical
> resurrection. This raises the more general question of whether there is
> some minimum core of miraculous events that one must accept in order to be a
> Christian.
>
>
>
> I have no rigid view on this, but I have noticed that it tends to be a sore
> point, not only between YECs and TEs, but also between some ID people and
> TEs, and between some ID people and the ASA list generally. So I think
> itâ€™s worth exploring.
>
>
>
> Itâ€™s my perception, from watching some of the back-and-forth in recent
> months, and in some of the archived ASA discussions, that the topic of
> miracles keeps coming up, but that the level of specificity in the
> discussion of Biblical miracles is usually quite low, and that the
> relationship between TE and historical miracles is generally left quite
> nebulous.
>
>
>
> There seem to be various reasons for this. One of them is that some
> posters here prefer to turn the conversation away from the facticity of, and
> toward the possible theoretical explanation of, purported miracles, so that
> the discussion tends to become: â€œIf a virgin birth occurred, it might be
> accounted for in naturalistic terms by means of a genetic anomaly such as
> ...â€